NERF No. 2

The new NERF 2: N-Strike Elite hit stores on October 27, 2009, just in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the NERF toy brand by Hasbro. For this second installment in the NERF N-Strike series, Hasbro teamed up with Electronic Arts to produce a toy/video game best-selling combo exclusively for the Nintendo Wii system.

This time around, the NERF 2: N-Strike Elite comes bundled with a newly designed blue NERF SWITCH SHOT EX-3 blaster and an attachable Red Reveal Decoder lens that lets you experience covert (undercover) operation elements and incredible blasting missions. Basically, this game lives by the code that more is always better – every element has been cranked up to the max, starting with the brand-new 3-in-1 blaster that will have your jaw dropping at first sight and extending to hidden gameplay elements you can only see when you use the Red Reveal Decoder lens, more in-game blasters, millions of upgrade combos, a brand-new army of robots to defeat and better multiplayer functionality than before.

It’s A Blast

The NERF 2: N-Strike Elite features a classic kind of video gameplay called “rail shooter style” and arms you with a whole range of fresh new features – including more than 16 different NERF blasters (some real, some fictional), each with its own strengths and weakness (for example, one blaster we used fired multiple shots at a time). When you snap your Wii remote into the NERF SWITCH SHOT EX-3 (which works as both a standalone blaster to defeat the enemy robots and a Wii controller when paired up with your Wii remote) and use the Red Reveal Decoder lens at the same time, for example, you’ll be able to see all sorts of hidden elements on the screen, like enemy weak spots, puzzles you must solve and secret messages that need to be decoded before you can blast your way to ultimate victory.

We had so much fun playing this game, jumping right into battle from the very beginning as one of four characters (you choose which one you want to be in the game; each character comes with a different set of abilities and blasters). Another VERY cool feature of the NERF 2: N-Strike Elite is whenever you find yourself in trouble during battle, you can have a friend step in (literally – other players leap out from all sides of the screen to give you backup in battle) and join the crusade as you play in co-op mode. It was also a lot of fun interacting with the various robots in the game, including B.O.B. – the original recruiting robot from the first NERF N-Strike game.

New Frontiers

Another improvement on the first game in the NERF N-Strike series is the fact that you get to explore a ton of different battle locations and environments in eight different levels of gameplay using the Wii remote to look around for objects and enemies that scroll off the screen. As you play, don’t forget to look for canisters, which can be collected and then spent on upgrades for your character’s blasters (like increasing its firing rate and speed and adding scopes and lasers for extra abilities). And, when you do play in two-player co-op mode, you and a friend can work together to unlock new paths that open up special Elite Moments in the game, where the action gets super intense and the screen fills with lots of enemies and incoming projectiles.